Are you still proud to be British?

I've always felt uneasy with this collective noun approach.  Britishness is a complex and contentious subject and depends on who you're talking to.  What is it exactly? Put someone English, Irish, Welsh and Scots in the same room who know their histories and pose them the same question, then spice it up with tales of Empire and colonialism, some stories perhaps from say Bradford, the experiences of representatives from pressure groups for the socially excluded, and the perspectives would likely be different. A variable ideology.  Along with tolerance, language, landscape, creativity, inventiveness, self-depracation I'd of course have to include marmite. 

I was asked this question the other day over coffee with friends. A simple little question -  one that gets thrown at you from time to time, and which you try to answer within a two minute time-frame, to avoid appearing to 'hog the conversation'.  Clearly my subconscious didn't rate my reply. Because here I am wide awake at 5.30am with it leaping about it my brain. Sad case really.

There wasn't one thing in particular that triggered the question. May be it was something as simple as our imminent move to France for a few years. We'd actually been discussing the second world war's continuing ability to surprise. May be Britishness during war or that war in particular is easier to define. But in any case as Anthony Horowitz put it in a Telegraph interview about the return of Foyle's War, 'there were still stories to tell', which is why the production team jumped at the chance of some more episodes. 

Also  Shetland had been on tv just a few days previously. Based on Anne Cleeve's book - Red Bones  The Shetland Bus was ultimately at the heart of the mystery, which I knew nothing about but as the link reveals, was a vital and dangerous boat run with Norway. Then we moved on to  Peter May's Lewis Trilogy, Annie Proulx and Tony Hillerman, all of whom are authors for whom a wide-open landscape establishes a powerful influence on their storylines.  There's also been something on the BBC website in the last few days about Australian Nancy Wake, otherwise known as the white mouse, who led an escape ring and was a member of the Maquis against German occupation, and whose ashes have just been scattered in the village of Verneix. Last year while we were in France, we went to see an exhibition in Romorantin-Lanthenay, about an hour away from us, and walking around came across the town's war memorial. One one side were listed all the British agents with their code names, who had been working alongside the local resistance. Never seen that before, anywhere. 

Then this morning there was something on the Beeb about 'What Japanese History leaves out'. Mind you there is a difference between what is deliberately left out and what remains simply overlooked. I was never aware through school, despite History being a main subject for me, that it was the British who created concentration camps, during the Anglo-Boer war. It took marriage to Mike and meetings with his South African relatives for me to discover that painful episode. 

May be self-reflection should be added to my list. Good things. Bad things. There are so many aspects and conflicting values surrounding Britishness. All I know is that ultimately I can't see myself living anywhere else. If successive governments and the Commission of Racial Equality in various papers can't define it, sure as hell, neither can I.